Vayama Travel Blog

Fly for Less to visit your “Friends” with Vayama’s  new Facebook application.

By Florin R Ferrs (World Traveler & invaluable “friend”)

I have many friends in real life, really I do. They are just not on Facebook.  But I do have over five thousand Facebook “friends”, mostly inherited from other “friends” of “friends” or from distant family.  My cousin Peter alone has made it his mission in life to trace our family’s ancestry and has “Facebooked” me to all the distant relatives I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting, from all around the world.

If I ever need to contact a real friend (in real life), I simply call or email them directly. I have no burning desire to display my dirty laundry on Facebook’s open forum. But more than once in a while, I have found Facebook’s non committal “friendships” by committee as the perfect place to keep up with all my non-friendships: I.E. ex girlfriends, in- laws, hiking club partners, bay to breakers teammates, assorted train- spotters, and distant relatives in distant countries that I’ve never met but would love to familiarize myself with (the distant countries, not so much the distant relatives, unless such distant relative is  prepared to offer me free room and board or at least a spare sofa to sleep on). Which brings me to vayama.com’s great new Facebook app that is perfect for the non- committal “friend” inside all of us, and because a free sofa in Copenhagen or Sydney is nothing to stick up your nose at nowadays.

I’m Coming to Visit (for Real!)

For this reason (and many more),  vayama’s “ I’m Coming To Visit” has become  a vital tool in my travel arsenal when it comes to scoring the cheapest  airfare to visit all my distant “friends”, with the added bonus of a free couch! That beats an expensive hotel any day,  it even beats a cheap roach infested hostel. Why pay for a hotel when you can stay for free at your “friend’s” house?, and if you’re lucky, your “friend” may even lend you his car, or maybe even his girlfriend (hey, it happens!).  And with all the money you  saved on airfare by using vayama’s “I’m coming to visit”, you will have plenty left over for more than just a few pints and maybe even a thank you card for that wonderful buddy of yours that let you crash at his pad. What branch of the family did you tell them you were from?  Does it matter?  Worst case scenario, if you need to keep your extended family’s story straight, that’s what Facebook is for.

I'm Coming to Visit: My Dear Distant Cousin Twice Removed

Of course, vayama’s “I’m Coming to visit” works both ways, making it easy for those pesky third cousins from Saskatoon (who you have never met, Uncle Carl’s Kids remember? ) to come and visit you as soon as “I’m Coming To Visit” tells them that the airfare price is right. You do a quick Facebook search and find out that Uncle Carl’s cousins are all teenagers in a Canadian Death Metal band and they have researched you on Facebook and have already written all over your wall: “Cool Crib Coz! Found pixs of your pad online,  is that a balcony we see? We’re coming to visit and we’re bringing our guitars, rock on dude!”

What do you do? You do what any reasonable adult would do. You un-friend all three of them as soon as you read their post and you fly out of the country. But that’s not “I’m Coming to Visit’s” fault. You just don’t really like Canadian Death Metal, that’s all. And you’re pretty sure that your elderly neighbors definitively hate Canadian Death Metal!  Besides, the lure of that free guest room in Sydney at cousin’s Joe pad on Bondi Beach is simply irresistible. And the cherry on top: You score a super cheap airfare to Sydney on V Australia thanks to vayama’s “I’m Coming To Visit”. So let’s have some of them shrimps on cousin’s Joe’s barbie. Cheers mate.

Bonding on Bondi Beach: Thanks Coz!

How does it Work?

“I’m coming to visit” is vayama’s  new Facebook application that takes the guesswork out of tracking, booking and buying the cheapest available airfares to visit your Facebook friends and for your friends to come visit you.

Simply select the friend you want to visit, enter your home airport, your ideal travel dates, and your friend’s closest airport and sit back. Your ‘visit’ is now active.

Your visit will display the cheapest airfare available to visit your friend on that day. It will automatically update the lowest available airfare every day so you can track, at a glance, if the lowest available airfare is trending up or down.  When the lowest available airfare hits the sweet spot, click on that particular ‘visit’ to book and buy. Simple as that.

Get this app now…FOR FREE!

Features:

• Create as many visits as you need
• Post visits on your Facebook wall for easy tracking
• Forward your visit to your Facebook friend’s wall
• Create visits for your friends to visit you
• Your visit’s airfare is updated every day
• Track your visits airfare trends at a glance
• Coming soon: Set sweet spot airfare alerts for each visit

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Travel Tips & Airfare Secrets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.